The Guns Above

by Robyn Bennis

  But he was a finely honed instrument of death mounted atop a horse—a weird, skittish creature that was only half sane on its best days.

  She saw a thick tree trunk ahead of her, wide enough to hide behind, and she stopped short, her boot digging into the soft earth in its shadow, the hussar only seconds behind. The rifle was still clutched in her whitening hands. She held it over her head and, as the horseman charged past, she brought the butt around in a crushing swing that drove not into the hussar, who was expecting that blow and ready to parry it, but onto his horse’s head.

  The animal’s dark brown eyes filled with blood. It turned away from the sudden pain just as Josette ducked the hussar’s counterattack. His saber went high and buried itself into the bark of the tree. He tugged at it, but the horse pulled away before he could free the blade.

  Josette did not pause or stop to assess. She ran after him, swinging her rifle with a savagery she’d never before experienced, striking a solid blow against his shoulder. Before he could get clear, she swung again in a scything motion that hit him in the belly just as his horse reared on its hind legs.

  The hussar fell, landed on his head, and crumpled. Josette stood over him, poised for a death blow. She shouted another demand for surrender.

  He didn’t answer her. He only lay still. Perfectly still.

  She slumped against a tree, gasping for breath. “Goddamn it,” she muttered. Before she could think to restrain it, the wounded horse ran off as well, and wouldn’t return no matter how loudly or angrily she shouted at it.

  Feeling a powerful thirst born of her sudden exertion, not to mention a resurgent headache, she checked both hussars’ canteens, but lamentably found only water. It was just her luck, at a time like this, to have killed the only sober cavalrymen in all the world.

  She searched their jackets and rucksacks, taking every piece of paper she found. She even slit open the usual hiding places, the secret pockets and doubled-over cuffs into which money and messages might be sewn.

  All told, she found several papers and a cache of Garnian coins, no doubt meant to pay for bribes and informants. She slipped them into her pocket. She searched the ship, too, but their orders had been destroyed—probably the moment they spotted Mistral—and the maps were uninformative.

  She headed for home, examining the papers as she went. Most were meaningless to her, just line after line of scribblings in a language she didn’t understand. One was a mundane promissory note, for gambling debts if she knew anything about hussars.

  Another was, of all things, a lumber survey stolen from Durum’s record house. It even had an official city stamp on it. The survey divided the King’s Woods to the east of Durum into plots and listed the types and qualities of the trees in them.

  She couldn’t fathom why the Vins would be interested in such insignificant minutiae of Garnian affairs, until she read to the bottom, where the surveyor provided an estimate of the time and effort required to clear back roads to reach the choicest lumber.

  “Oh God,” she said, suddenly understanding.

  “Oh God.” She stuffed the papers into her jacket and ran. By the time she reached the road she was already panting, but she pushed on even faster.

  “Oh God.” She ran until she thought she might pass out from the pain in her feet, the pain in her legs, the burning of her lungs, and the lightness in her head. But finally she spotted Durum in the distance. She couldn’t stop. She couldn’t slow down. It was probably too late anyway, but if it wasn’t, then minutes might make all the difference.

  The gates were wide open. She tripped over a jutting stone where the compact dirt of the road turned into the cobblestones of the city, but caught herself before she fell. She staggered on through the streets, down alleys that she’d known since childhood, taking precious shortcuts that shaved time, second by second, off her sprint for the south gate.

  She ran into Martel coming the other way, heading into the city from the signal base. Thank God it was someone competent, someone she could trust. She was dizzy now and misjudged the distance between them, so that instead of skidding to a stop in front of him, she barreled into the man and knocked him to the ground.

  He laughed as he sat up, but one look at her face silenced him. He jumped to his feet and held out a hand to help her, but she waved it away, gasping for breath. “Message,” she managed to spit out between gasps. “Run and send a bird to Arle … and a rider to the … to the nearest semaphore sta—”

  The last word caught in her throat. She was wracked by a string of hacking coughs.

  “What message?” Martel asked, poised to run.

  She gulped air and said, “From Durum: Vin attack imminent.”

  * * *

  WITH MARTEL ARRANGING for a horse messenger, Josette was forced to deal with Lieutenant Garand herself.

  “Have you replaced our sprung girder?” she asked, her voice still showing signs of breathless exhaustion.

  “Perhaps you should sit down and have a drink,” Garand said, taking short steps despite his longer legs. It made him look like he was trotting to keep up with her.

  “I’m fine. Did you hear my question?”

  He assumed a more dignified gait. “It was the first thing we finished.”

  “Good man,” she said, suspecting that Martel had insisted on that priority. “Get to work on the booms and airscrews. The rest can wait.”

  “But I’ve just sent the yardsmen home.”

  She eyed him. “Then get them back. I intend to have my ship in the air come morning. We need eyes on the Vins. They’re coming, Mr. Garand. They’re coming soon.”

  No spy, after all, would be so brazen as to steal documents from the records hall if the matter weren’t pressing. Even if a lumber survey wouldn’t be missed, there was the risk of being caught with a document that told precisely how long it would take an invading army’s engineers to cut a road through the woods and bypass Durum.

  She thought of the papers in her jacket. “I found a number of other documents, but they’re all in Vin. Do you have anyone trustworthy who can translate them?”

  Garand frowned. “Plenty here who speak Vin, but not many who can read it. Maybe if someone sounds it out for them?”

  Just as she’d feared. “It’s worth a shot if we can’t find anyone else,” she said. If no yardsman or trusted local could translate the documents, the alternative was unthinkable.

  She went into the shed to look over her maps. The more she studied them, the more she thought the Vins’ real target was still Arle, and Durum just happened to be in the way of their next line of attack.

  If Arle fell, it would be a hard loss for Garnia, least of all because of its essential industries. It was no wonder the Vins were persisting in their efforts to take it, for it would deprive Garnia of her largest signal base and a critical rail hub.

  Josette scanned the map, checking the roads and towns along likely routes of attack. The Vin city of Kamenka was across the border, only two days’ march from Durum, and from Durum an army could march to Arle in three days more. But how would the Vins get an army to Kamenka in the first place? They didn’t have extensive rail infrastructure along this stretch of the border. There was little economic reason, since Kamenka was hardly bigger than Durum, and produced nothing that was worth moving by rail.

  The nearest rail line was a week’s march from Kamenka, and the roads too rough and narrow to move a sizable force very quickly. An army assembling in Kamenka would take months to trickle in, something even Garnian intelligence—such as it was—would have surely detected by now.

  She ran her finger between Kamenka and the nearest known Vin railway line. The road from that line to Kamenka was poorly developed, but it ran straight for most of its length, perfect for building a branch line. Could the Vins have managed that since the last time the area was scouted?

  The yardsmen and crew were beginning to arrive and return to work. They were just hauling the outboard airscrews down when an older man came in thro
ugh the shed door. Despite two extra decades of wrinkles and gray hair, Josette recognized him immediately as Kadi Halphin. Even if she hadn’t recognized him by sight, she would have recognized the attire of office: the wide, gold-colored wool belt and that ridiculous red fez. On several occasions as a child, she’d tried to toss pennies onto its flat top, but they had always bounced off.

  “Your Honor,” she said, presenting herself with a snappy little bow and hoping to God he wouldn’t recognize her. “You have a spy in your town.”

  Halphin laughed. “Just the one?”

  “One who stole this,” she said, handing him the purloined survey.

  He examined it, not seeming to understand the implications. Then again, he didn’t seem to recognize Josette, either, so she counted her blessings.

  “It tells the Vins how long it’ll take to cut a road through the woods. I expect they’ll be on a very tight schedule, so they want to know whether it’s faster to bypass us or just capture the town.”

  He grinned. “If they try that, they’ll find that no one builds walls like ours anymore.”

  Josette attempted to keep her chagrin hidden. The kadi was right. No one built walls like Durum’s anymore, because Durum’s stone walls would shatter under a few hours of cannon fire. The Vins wouldn’t even bother to emplace their siege guns. Mere field artillery would be sufficient.

  “And if they do get in, my militia will send them packing.”

  Said militia was comprised of about half the male population of the town and was an absolute rabble. “You can’t honestly expect to resist an entire Vin army,” Josette said.

  Halphin didn’t answer, but only gave her a patronizing look. It was the kind of look she’d long since become accustomed to. It said that she should see to her gears and luftgas, and leave the hard work of strategy in better, or at least more masculine, hands.

  “Perhaps as a precaution,” she said, “in case they bombard and burn the town rather than risk an assault, you should evacuate the civilians, make preparations to fire the shed, and spoil any food that can’t be carried away?”

  He was on the verge of dismissing the idea, when doubt crept into his face. “They wouldn’t really shell us, would they?”

  She was certain they wouldn’t. It would take longer than capturing the town, for one thing, and a Vin army on the march preferred pillage over destruction. The spoils of a good pillaging raised morale and helped keep the soldiers fed. Nevertheless, she put on a dour face and said, “They would happily shell your town, Your Honor. They’re brutal, you know. And cowards. And no wall can stop a shell that’s lobbed over it, or one that’s dropped from an airship above. They’ll burn Durum to ash, having never set foot within a mile of it, and they’ll sleep soundly afterward.” She thought of telling him how much they liked to eat babies, but decided that it might be going too far.

  “I’ll consider an evacuation of the women and children,” he said. “Good day, Lieutenant.”

  As Josette was returning to her maps, Lieutenant Garand ran in and stopped next to her. “We found someone who can translate the documents,” he said. “University educated.”

  She stopped and closed her eyes, taking a deep breath. At this moment, there was certainly only one man in Durum who was university educated.

  “I hope this is important,” Bernat said, strolling up and speaking in that insufferably cheerful tone of his. “The Dupre household was just sitting down to dinner.”

  * * *

  BERNAT WISHED HE had stayed at dinner, for the Vinzhalian documents turned out to be entirely mundane. Captain Dupre was exasperated, but what did she expect? That Vinzhalian scouts would wander through Garnian territory carrying their own battle plans?

  “Perhaps,” he suggested, “if I could have a word with the prisoners?”

  The captain stared at him. “What prisoners?”

  “The prisoners you took these documents from.”

  “I’m afraid they’re dead.”

  So she’d tortured the poor devils to death. How ghastly. “Did you write down anything they said before they died?”

  The captain looked at him in that petty, patronizing way of hers. “Why yes,” she said, “I have their last words right here.” She made a show of shuffling through some papers. “One said, ‘Ow, you’ve shot me,’ and the other said, ‘Tell Madeline I love her.’ Or it might have been ‘Marianne.’ It was rather hard to hear. Bad acoustics in the woods, you know. Which is a shame, really, because now the girls will never know who he was thinking of while being beaten about the head with a rifle butt.”

  To Bernat’s shame, he sat staring stupidly into the air for a while, before he realized she was mocking him. To his further shame, it took him longer still to realize what she was getting at. “You killed them in the woods?” he asked.

  She snorted and said, “Well, it would have been rude to kill them in the town, wouldn’t it? It was so far out of their way.”

  He suddenly understood that she wasn’t angry at him. She was angry at herself, and taking it out on him, which meant things were getting back to normal between them. “What were they doing out in the woods?”

  Well, now she was angry at him. “The woods are where you go when you’re scouting Durum for an invasion force.” She spread a map with a tempestuous flick of her wrist and looked it over. She scribbled some calculations on the table and shook her head.

  “What’s the matter?” he asked.

  She pointed to a spot on the map. “Here we are in Durum. Vinzhalia is directly to the east, with the border stretching north and south. Arle is a few day’s march from here, to the southwest. So why haven’t they come through here and attacked it before now?”

  He thought for a second, and then said, “Lack of initiative.”

  She ignored his answer. “Because it’s a wilderness east of Kamenka. Assembling an army of any decent size would be a nightmare. But…” She ran her finger along a road running east out of Kamenka. “If they have a rail branch here, they can assemble in a matter of days.” She tapped it a few times as she thought. “If they do, there might be an army of fifty thousand marching toward us at this moment. They could arrive at Arle in five days, before we can assemble a comparable army to meet them.”

  Bernat frowned. “I would think five days would be more than enough time to bring troops south. It’s only a few days by train from Quah.”

  “You’re right. Five days is more than enough time for an efficient, professional army to gather for a defense of Arle. And if Garnia ever possesses such an army, God help the rest of the world.” She pointed to Arle on the map. “In this army, my message will reach Arle in about a day, and will most likely be put at the bottom of a big damn stack of papers, because they aren’t expecting critical information from Mistral. When someone does eventually read it, it’ll be passed to Colonel Bellamy, the commander of the Arle garrison. Bellamy has always hated the signal corps, which hardly makes him unique in the top ranks. He thinks that all the money spent on the signal base and luftgas would be better spent on what he likes to call the ‘real army’—a truly hilarious sentiment coming from a garrison commander. In any event, he’ll mistrust the message from the start, pull out his maps, and conclude that a Vin surprise attack couldn’t possibly originate from Kamenka. I have to admit, he won’t be entirely stupid for thinking it, but he’ll be stupid for ignoring us. Then tomorrow we’ll go hunting for that new rail line, and if we find it, they’ll know about it in Arle a day after that, but Bellamy will have already made up his mind by then, and won’t make any special haste in passing the message up the chain of command.” She paused, thinking about it. “In fact, I expect Durum to fall, and the news of that to make it to General Fieren before my report does. Even then, Lord Fieren won’t think the Vins have enough troops on this part of the border to threaten Arle, for all the same reasons he didn’t think they’d open a second front in the first place. By the time he works out the truth, it’ll be too late to bring a force south. The d
efense of Arle will be left to the garrison and the militia—a force comprised of all the men who’ve managed to avoid being conscripted into the regular army—and the Vins will march over them like so many blades of grass. And once they have Arle, we haven’t a chance, so I really might as well have taken my time getting back here with this.” She waved something in his face that looked curiously like a lumber survey.

  “So,” Bernat said, staring at the map, “an entire war will be lost, due to ego and bureaucracy?”

  “If you read between the lines of your history books, my lord, you may find it’s more common than you think.”

  “But surely my uncle…”

  Now she was shouting at him. “Will not arrive in time. Or he’ll arrive without a goddamn army. At best, he’ll manage to move a few regiments from Quah to Arle, not enough to make a difference, and those regiments will only be trapped inside the siege lines, ducking shells and starving to death.” She jabbed at the map with her finger, growing even more agitated. “The Vins don’t even have to take the city to cut the rail hub. And without that hub, we can’t move regiments fast enough to answer their attacks along the second front. They can threaten Kuchin itself, or crush us piece by piece if they prefer. And do you know why?”

  He crossed his arms over his chest. “Pray tell.”

  “Because your idiot uncle finds it inconceivable that the Vins would open a second front!”

  Bernat frowned. “I’ve just been wondering about that. I mean to say, why would they open a second front?”

  She leaned toward him in a manner he found threatening. “Because,” she said slowly, “that’s the sort of thing you do when you’re winning.”

  “But Garnia hasn’t lost a war in…” Something about the way she narrowed her eyes warned him that he was about to take his life into his hands. “I mean to say, even if that’s true, why would the Vins risk siphoning troops from the Quah campaign?”

  “I expect they’re hoping to get the matter over with.” She slumped against the table. “If they threaten Kuchin, they can name their own peace terms. They’ll take Quah at the bargaining table and head home to rest up for the next war.”